Detroit Works grows roots: Revitalization project to have physical home across from Eastern Market

Jonathan Oosting | MLive.comOffice space for lease on Russell Street across from Eastern Market in Detroit.

While organizers say the Detroit Works Project is refocused on reaching out to the community, they also say it's important to move in to a physical space.

Which is exactly what they're doing.

The long-term planning civic engagement team is looking to set up shop in an office space on Russell Street directly across from shed 5 of Detroit's Eastern Market.

They'll begin moving in coming weeks and hope to be up and running by January.

"We just signed a lease," Charles Cross, co-director of community engagement, told MLive.com. "So now people can walk off the street and talk to somebody. Not somebody who takes their name and passes along a message, but somebody who is right there and is knowledgeable about the project."

The physical location is only one part of a new strategy -- which includes a street team, a roaming table, pin-up posters, social media, bus ride-alongs -- designed to engage residents and answer their questions.

For instance, what is Mayor Dave Bing's plan to reinvent Detroit?

"There is no plan," said engagement co-director Dan Pitera, smiling as he repeated the mayor's mantra. "At the end of this there is going to be a strategic framework -- not a plan -- that will guide decisions about the city's future."

Bing first talked a bold plan for the city's future more than a year ago, explaining that relocating residents from blighted to stable neighborhoods would be a part of it. He then spent the better part of the year denying there was a concrete plan and reinforcing that it would not include eminent domain.

The city held more than 40 community meetings to encourage input, but many of the early gatherings were marked by frustrated, skeptical and concerned residents all-too familiar with the city's long history of uprooting neighborhoods to make way for industry.

And so the civic engagement team, which began work in earnest this month, is trying to learn from those mistakes even as it actively works to involve residents.

"I was at all those meetings, and the citizens were clearly upset," said Slows Bar BQ owner Phil Cooley, who is serving dual roles as a process leader and member of the Detroit Works steering committee. "But if you listen to them -- even the ones who couldn't express it because they were screaming mad -- they had something to say."